- Fallujah, Iraq (AP) -- Leaflets seen in mosques in this
tense Sunni Muslim region warned of new attacks using "modern and
advanced methods" only days before insurgents brought down a U.S.
Army Chinook helicopter, killing 16 and wounding 20 others.
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- The Sunday missile attack on the helicopter, carrying
dozens of soldiers on their way home for leave, was the deadliest single
strike against U.S. forces since the war began March 20.
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- Three other Americans - one 1st Armored Division soldier
and two civilians working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - were also
killed Sunday in separate attacks, making it the bloodiest day for U.S.
forces since March 23.
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- At the Chinook crash site, near the Euphrates River farming
village of Hasi, just south of Fallujah, a giant crane lifted pieces of
wreckage onto a truck. Soldiers sealed off the immediate area deep in the
"Sunni Triangle" that has produced the most violent opposition
to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
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- Witnesses said the attackers used shoulder-fired missiles
against the Chinook, a sign of the increasing sophistication of Iraq's
elusive anti-U.S. fighters as the insurgency intensifies.
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- The large twin-rotor helicopter was flying with a second
Chinook headed for Baghdad International Airport when two missiles streaked
into the sky and slammed into the rear of the aircraft, witnesses told
Associated Press. It crashed in flames in farmers' fields west of Baghdad.
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- An unsigned leaflet posted Friday at mosques in the area,
where anti-U.S. sentiment runs high, urged people to avoid public places
over the weekend.
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- "Special operations against occupation forces might
be carried out by using modern and advanced methods," the leaflet
said.
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- The leaflet also warned people stay at home, avoid going
to work or school and stay away from markets Saturday and Sunday.
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- "Any persons who move during this period will be
responsible for their own safety," the note said.
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- U.S. officials have blamed Saddam Hussein loyalists,
foreign fighters and Islamic extremists for the stepped up attacks on the
U.S. occupation.
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- On Monday, 16 U.S. soldiers wounded in the helicopter
attack arrived in Germany for treatment at a U.S. military hospital. Eleven
of the soldiers were in intensive care but stable condition, while five
others were in the main ward with lesser injuries, said U.S. Army Colonel
Rhonda Cornum, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
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- The soldiers - 15 men and one woman - were among nearly
30 soldiers who arrived early Monday at Ramstein Air Base aboard a C-17
transport aircraft. A 17th soldier injured in the attack was to arrive
Tuesday morning, said Marie Shaw, a spokeswoman for the hospital.
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- In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed his regret
over the attack, saying the past week had been a "particularly grim
seven days" in terms of casualties, a spokesman said Monday.
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- "It's clearly a tragic day for America," U.S.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington. "In a long,
hard war, we're going to have tragic days. But they're necessary. They're
part of a war that's difficult and complicated."
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- L. Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation in Iraq, repeated
demands that Syria and Iran prevent fighters from crossing their borders
into Iraq.
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- "They could do a much better job of helping us seal
that border and keeping terrorist out of Iraq," he told the cable
network CNN. The "enemies of freedom" in Iraq "are using
more sophisticated techniques to attack our forces."
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- The violence continued late Sunday, when five shells
exploded in different neighbourhoods in the northern oil city of Kirkuk,
killing one Iraqi and injuring eight, Jalal Jawher, a Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan official said on Monday. "They were randomly fired. There
are no U.S. bases in those areas," he said.
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- U.S. officials have been warning of the danger of shoulder-fired
missiles, hundreds of which are now scattered from Mr. Hussein's arsenals,
and such missiles are believed to have downed two U.S. copters since May
1. Those two crashes - of smaller helicopters - wounded only one person.
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- The loaded Chinook was a dramatic new target. The insurgents
have been steadily advancing in their weaponry, first using homemade roadside
bombs, then rocket-fired grenades in ambushes on American patrols, and
vehicles stuffed with explosives and detonated by suicide attackers.
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- With the helicopter crash, at least 139 American soldiers
have been killed by hostile fire since U.S. President George W. Bush declared
an end to combat on May 1. Around 377 U.S. service members have died since
the beginning of military operations in Iraq.
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- The death toll Sunday surpassed one of the deadliest
single attacks during the Iraq war: the March 23 ambush of the 507th Maintenance
Company, in which 11 soldiers were killed, nine were wounded and seven
captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch. A total of 28 Americans around
Iraq died that day, the deadliest for U.S. troops during the war.
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